Guy and Candie Carawan Honored as Civil Rights Pioneers
Guy and Candie Carawan — musicians, activists, and long-time Highlander staff members — have received extensive coverage in the Knoxville press recently as a result of being among those honored for their work in the Civil Rights Movement by the Knoxville Presidential Inauguration Celebration Committee.
On February 2nd, Knoxville television station WVLT-TV aired “We Shall Overcome,” a segment of their “Tennessee Traveler” series that highlights the Carawan’s role in helping to spread “We Shall Overcome” throughout the Civil Rights movement and beyond. Click below to play this clip.
On February 18th, the Knoxville New-Sentinel ran a front-page article about Guy and Candie, “Carawans Used Music to Help Champion Civil Rights,” as part of their Black History Month series on local civil rights pioneers.
Through Highlander, Guy Carawan had the opportunity to introduce “We Shall Overcome” as a protest song during the civil-rights movement, along with “Eyes on the Prize” and other retooled tunes. They’ve brought their own philosophy to the work of the center and to progressive activism across Appalachia and the South — the notion that injustice is more easily overcome by those whose voices are joined in song.
“You can look to them to find a vision of hope,” said Mary Thom Adams, who grew up at the Highlander Center and worked there as a development director. “Everything they did in 1959, they have managed to stay relevant.”
Highlander’s Board and staff are honored to be associated with the Carawans, and join in celebrating their deep commitment to making music and culture a vital part of the fight for social and economic justice.
For more on the Carawans and the other civil rights pioneers honored by the Knoxville Presidential Inauguration Celebration Committee, click here.
Rising South: WRL Asheville On the Road through “Dixie”* « War Resisters League Asheville on 10 May 2009 at 1:31 am #
[...] The Asheville local of War Resisters’ League has received a travel grant from the WRL national office in New York to carry on with our work in the Southeast identifying allies and collaborators for a proposed WRL S.E. Activist and Organizers gathering in 2010. Through in-person conversations and good listening across the southeast, we intend to pull together a rich mixture of serious and seasoned peace workers with emerging and energetic younger activists and organizers from many fronts in the ongoing wars waged against humanity and the Earth. Charlotte native Coleman Smith (pictured above organizing with Asheville’s Magnolia Watch) and Memphis native Clare Hanrahan (Bicycling in to join the 7-year long Women in Black Asheville vigil) will begin our week-long “Dixie loop” through Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina on Sunday, March 22. We’ll set out along the backroads and through the mountains of Western North Carolina and into East Tennessee for our first stop at the historic Highlander Center where we will have the opportunity for Sunday afternoon on the hill conversations with director Pam McMichael and old friends Guy and Candie Carawan. [...]